I agree with you 100%. I think the game does this especially well when it comes to major deaths and cuts scenes, like with Whitney, Abby vs Ellie in the theater, etc. But I think the game falls a bit flat when it comes to the attempts in standard combat to make you feel bad. They have people yelling other people's names and try to have the characters talk in a way that humanized them, but it ultimately falls to ludonareative dissonance because gameplay is really fun.

So anyway, I think I just see both sides of this argument, and I totally agree with you that the people who wanted to kill Abby at the end missed the point.